Attempting to cut through the crap of religion in order to get to Jesus.

Salvation

05/14/2012

I arrived, and I discovered that it was all that was promised! I had moved to Seattle, and the city, itself, is everything it was billed to be. The church community at the Shoreline Vineyard was absolutely amazing. For me, it is truly a land flowing with milk and honey.

Now, as I am writing this, I am working the door in my new job as a bouncer at Fox Harbor Pub & Grill, back in Green Bay, Wisconsin. What happened, God? Is there any reason why you showed me that land? Am I to die within sight of the fulfillment of the promise, as Moses did? How is it a promise, if I never get to realize it?

I want to break all of this down, because I am finally at a place of some clarity on this whole adventure. I have not, by any means, arrived. I still have some frustration, anger, and pain around the whole thing. I have felt, at times, abandoned, betrayed, and lost. I have now, at least, found a bit of a place of peace, because God has given me quite a bit of insight about the nature of promise, covenant, and our participation in those realities. When God gives us a vision for a promise, God fills us with a fire and passion to see, at any personal cost, the fulfillment of that promise. Of course, we will soon face the "buyer's regret" of signing this contract, but that is exactly why God lets us get excited and to burn with an all-or-nothing, consuming desire to see it all.

I have heard people make gossipy, negative comments about others who, in a moment of overwhelming emotion and desperation, commit their lives to Christ, perhaps in an altar call type of setting. An altar call, for the uninitiated, is a Protestant tradition of making people very aware of their moral and spiritual depravity, presenting the promise of salvation in Christ, and then asking people to respond by coming to the altar in the front to publicly proclaim their repentance for their depravity and their desire to have Jesus become their personal Lord and Savior. It's not my style as a pastor, but what do I know? Who am I to judge? It is precisely the emotional surge in response to the promise of being washed clean and being reborn in Jesus that seems to give us the strength to continue to persevere in living out the relationship during difficulties and while facing obstacles later in the journey. We often forget how that surge drove us to the feet of God in the first place. It's not empty, weak emotionalism that is the birthplace of faith, but the mustard seed of purpose and vision, planted by God and intended for the increase of our ability and willingness to try, risk, move, flow, fail, succeed, learn, and grow. It is not an overriding of our internal self, but an intensification of all that was hard wired in us in the womb.

It seems that Abram, later Abraham, must have been filled with that kind of emotional passion when he left the land of Harran, the land of his family and all he knew, and set out for the strange land promised him by God. He knew nothing about that land, other than God promised to prosper him there. He was an old man, far beyond the age of taking risks and being filled with vision for new adventures. Cribbage, golf, and hip replacements should have been the substance of his life, not starting over. All Genesis 12 gives us is the command of God to go to this new land, the promise of a prosperous future, and the simple phrase:

"So Abram went...".

Was it really that easy? What was going through Abram's mind? Did God show up in person to Abram and then travel with Abram to this new land, eliminating all doubt and fear? There is nothing like that in the passage. It is simply command, promise, and response. Maybe I am different, and I am less obedient than Abraham. Maybe he had that kind of simple faith that I would love to have. God says it, and I believe it. That would be wonderful, but I am much more dysfunctional and neurotic than that. I need a full conversion of my heart to take on a brand new life. I need a personal transformation each and every time God gives me something new. I am still a very, very young man (ahem), but I imagine it would be much harder as an old man like Abram.

I think the first key to unlocking the complex, mysterious reality of interacting with a living and personal God is found in a closer examination of the promise. The promise is the seed of hope and a future of prosperity and purpose. That promise is the spark of fire that launches Abram into a risk-taking uncertainty and a willingness to turn away from all that he knows and finds comfortable. Because of our own punishment/reward mentality, however, we often see the promise as a reward for good behavior. If we do it right and follow the rules, THEN we get the promise. If we don't, the promise goes away. It is a conditional promise based on a proper response. So, it is all on us, and we no longer need God. God, then, stops being King and Lord over our lives, and is reduced to a controllable and ignorable fortuneteller or life coach.

Abram kept God exalted to God's rightful place as Lord. However, I have to imagine that there was at least some questioning and struggling on Abram's part. While it is not in the biblical account, just by the very fact that Abram was human, I would think that he would have wanted to double check the source before leaping. He would want to see that God was actually the one addressing him. At some point, Abram must have reached a place of confidence, because he went.

Upon arriving in the Promised Land, Abram built a huge mansion of brick and mortar, establishing the first suburban, gated community. No, actually, he walked around. He would pitch his tent and then, breaking camp, move to a new part of the land. He wanted to explore the whole area, in order to see what God had given him.

Then God appeared to Abram and restated the promise. Why? We don't know for sure, because we aren't given that information. However, I would guess that Abraham needed to be reassured. The passage tells us that the land was occupied. Abram did not show up with an army. He had his wife and his nephew, Lot, with Lot's family along as well. They were not battle-hardened soldiers of fortune. They were nomadic herders of livestock. I don't know about your experiences with this, but I have learned, through some really awkward moments, that if I walk into someone else's yard and pitch a tent, claiming that God promised that land to me as my inheritance, the current inhabitants tend to protest. The Canaanites, unlike Abram and company, actually had multiple armies. So, once Abram saw that the land was occupied by other, armed people, who would not just kindly apologize and immediately move out upon learning of the promise of a God they did not know, based on the word of a strange, nomadic farmer, Abram probably needed some encouragement.

God showed up to remind him of the passionate vision that had brought him to this strange land in the first place. THEN, finally, Abram was able to build the mansion, and he and his wife were able to live happily ever after, never struggling or moving from that permanent, promised home. Actually, he built an altar, not a home for himself. This action was the equivalent of planting a flag, claiming the land for God. Abram never actually ended up building a permanent structure for himself. In fact, the very next verse tells us that there was a famine in the land, and he had to leave to go to Egypt. I'll talk a bit about that next time, but I want to focus in on the nomadic life of Abraham, a homeless man with a promised land. The only piece of land he ended up legally owning was a field with a cave, where he would be buried next to his wife, Sarah.

Here's my point. Abraham seemed to be aware of a truth that most of us miss. When the promise is given, we become passionate and fired up about pursuing that promise. This is a tool for God to keep us checked-in and intentional. However, the danger in that passionate pursuit is in mistaking the promise for the One who made the promise. We don't pursue the Promised Land. We pursue the Promiser. Our passion is awesome and necessary, but it can quickly become a detriment and even a cancer if it becomes more than a motivational driver, leading us to trust and obedience.

Abram seemed to instinctively know that none of this was about the land. It was all about God. The promise, even after it was shared with Abram, never actually belonged to Abram at all, as something to be possessed and held tightly. Therefore, Abram did not kick, scream, and cry when facing Canaanites or famine. He did not cry out to God about being forced to go to Egypt for a time, in order to continue to feed his family. He just did what he had to do. God didn't command him to go to Egypt, and God didn't punish him for going without a direct order from God to do so.

I have trouble with that much freedom. I want God to tell me, step by step, what I must do every single moment of every day. I often complain to God about how slow and stubborn I am. God, if you want me to do X, don't leave me on my own to do it. I am bound to screw it up. Tell me how to do exactly what you want, and I will do it. I want you to micro-manage my life. That approach is as sinful as trying to take over and do it all on my own, looking at God as a life coach, rather than Lord. Either way, I'm trying to control the divine.

God trusts me. God wants me to make mistakes and fail, so I can learn. Those failures are not detrimental, as long as my heart is fixed on God and not the promise.

The telos (or inherent, core purpose) of each and every one of God's promises is to drive us to the heart of God.

The promise is never intended to replace God as our source of strength, provision, or joy. The land is just dirt. As they say, the grass is always greener. I will not be able to hear God better or have more faith in Seattle than in Green Bay. Seattle cannot bring me joy or fulfillment any more than Green Bay can. God told me to go to Seattle. I went, after double and triple checking. For me, it became a place of famine, so I had to go back to Egypt for a time. God provided a job with SmartRelationships.org for my wife and a job as a bouncer for me. This is not my dream job, nor is it the provision that God promised. However, both positions will keep us alive and paying our mortgage for a little while, at least until the famine ends.

So, I turn my back on the Promised Land, and it is now okay. I know that God has something for us. I believe it is in Seattle, but it could be Boston, Phoenix, Minneapolis, New York, or any number of places. The land is dirt. God is eternal, and God is good. God is the treasure and the point of the promise. If I hold lightly to the "where" and cling tightly to the "Who", I will find the fulfillment and the joy I desire. This has given me great peace in a time of confusion and turmoil.

So, how about you? Have you ever had a "Promised Land"? Did you get it right away? Are you still hoping to get there? How has God dealt with you in this area of your life?

03/19/2012

I think the very quick, knee-jerk response to suffering for us, myself included, is to compare ourselves to Job. We are just good folks, minding our own business, and then God sends the devil after us for some undeserved torture. "Have you considered my servant (insert your own name here)?" God asks of this satanic figure. We didn't ask for this. Now God is using us for the settling of some cosmic wager? We weren't even on the devil's radar screen, until God threw us under the bus and put a big light on us! Betting that Job's fidelity to God would fail, resulting in Job cursing God, Satan kills all of Job's kids and grand-kids, wipes out all of his possessions, and covers Job with burning, itching, open sores. To be helpful, Job's wife shows up and yells at him for being cursed. Job's friends all try to support him by trying to help him list all of his sins.

For Job's part, he never curses God. He questions and searches and doubts and gets angry, but he never turns his back on God or curses God's name. God addresses Job with a series of questions of God's own. God takes Job apart, asking him if he was there when the foundations of the world were set into place. It wasn't a "suck it up, Job" speech. It wasn't a speech designed to make Job feel worse. It was an epiphany moment for a very broken man. God was not rebuking Job. God was rewarding Job with a glimpse into the big picture of the entire universe!

I do struggle with the very end of the Job story, however. Job is given everything back multiplied by ten. Sure, the possessions would be cool, but ten times as many kids and all new ones? If God allowed my three kids to be taken from me, I am not sure I would feel lots better by getting 30 new ones. How can 30 new little brats replace the three brats I love so much right now? I'd want them back. I wouldn't want to have to feed 30 I don't care about. But I do not have the universal perspective that Job was given. I don't know on that one.

Anyway, I think our self-comparison to Job is a poor one. Job's story was not written to give us some archetype to neatly explain our own suffering. I have heard many sermons on Job, trying to wrap up the whole thing with the tidy bow of a palatable, edifying, and pithy life lesson. I think we have to ignore the entire story of Job to accomplish such a feat of theological gymnastics. We have to dismiss all of the uncomfortable questions that we are left to ponder. Was Job really sinless before the incident? Was his blessing really a blessing? Did Job like these new kids better than the originals, in order to simply be "okay" with the deaths of the ones he raised? Was Job unaffected, in the end, by all of the loss and pain he had endured? Was he able to look back on the devastation of his previous life and laugh some kind of wise chuckle, because he was, in that moment, satiated by all of his shiny new stuff? Was he really like a dog that chews on the couch and stops because of the distraction caused by the introduction of a new chew toy?

No, I don't think Job was written to be a lesson to us all on how to deal with pain and suffering. I don't think pain and suffering is ever so simple as to be explained away or forgotten because of getting new playthings. We try. We work really hard to make suffering that way. The talking heads of Christianity on television speak of suffering as merely momentary, passing. God does not desire us to suffer, so it is an "attack of the enemy". Or else they take the position of Job's friends and declare that it is just punishment for sin. Many of the Christian TV Stars, remember, took the nonsensical position of the Haiti earthquake being the punishment for their worship of false gods. The 9/11 attacks were God's punishment for the sin of our country's widespread acceptance of homosexuality. Fools and idiots. But we all do some of that, don't we? "My friend, Joe, was just diagnosed with stage 4, terminal lung cancer. Poor guy is coughing up blood and is not able to even talk to his children to say goodbye. BUT, it all makes sense. Remember 10 years ago, when Joe smoked cigarettes for those 3 months, while struggling with his wife's death? You can't smoke and not expect to pay the price for that sin." We all want neat, clean answers. Unfortunately, our search for simple explanations invalidates and minimizes the depth of our suffering.

Some say our suffering is all God testing our perseverance and faithfulness. So, we are no longer God's children, but rats in God's cosmic Skinner Box. I don't know about you, but I have never repeatedly punched my son in the face to see how much of a beating he could take, or if he could still say he loves me. Such testing would be cruel and horrible.

Still others say that the suffering is to get us to the reward. We get back 10 times what we have lost! Isn't that awesome? God has chosen us for the privilege of suffering, because God plans to really, really reward us! I have suffered a lot of loss in my life. I have never looked back on it and laughed. I have never gotten to the point where new people in my life have replaced the emptiness of the loss of precious loved ones. New people are wonderful, but the reward did not make me feel the deep heartache of real loss any less.

I was feeling sorry for myself the other day (I have started alternating days between self-pity and hope, for the sake of efficiency), and then I read an article about the devastating tornado in southern Indiana. I read the story of a poor woman, her husband, and their three babies, huddled in their crappy trailer, praying for God's mercy and protection. Their bodies were found scattered as far as a quarter mile away, laying in piles of rubble like human garbage. What sin did those toddlers commit? Where is their reward after a lifetime of suffering in poverty? Well, they are in a better place, right? They have a mansion, now, in heaven. I hear it's a double-wide! We cannot invalidate and dismiss suffering with frivolous and cute explanations of sin and reward. Sometimes suffering, as in the case of Job, is undeserved, unsatisfying, and inexplicable. Sometimes it just sucks.

The "problem" of the book of Job is purely an evangelical, dialectical one. In an either/or, black-and-white worldview, anything gray and messy is unacceptable. The Book of Job does not seem to be problematic at all in a Judaic understanding of the world. Since the first telling of this story, Jews have had the ability to live with the Job story as it is, rather than attempting to rescue it from being a mystical, unkempt narrative. The both/and approach of Judaism is the only valid way to look at the Job story and our own suffering. Job isn't a lesson. It refuses to be reduced to that minimalist reading. So does my life story. I don't have anything sorted out neatly to have you learn some important life truth, so true that it can be universally applied.

I have made lots of mistakes in my blundering walk with Jesus. Am I being punished for it? Maybe, quite possibly, somewhat. I did everything well this time. I took my time and waited before making the leap here. I brought good, healthy closure with Green Bay. I didn't take unnecessary risks. Was I actually being too safe and risk free? Maybe, quite possibly, somewhat. I have taken unnecessary risks in the past for the sake of following God's call. I wanted to be wise and not make the same mistakes. Did I maybe hear God wrong again this time? Maybe, quite possibly, somewhat. Am I on exactly the right path, so Satan is attacking me? Maybe, quite possibly, somewhat. Is God preparing me for some awesome reward, following a new, universal perspective? Maybe, quite possibly, somewhat.

My situation, like Job's, has no neat explanation. I believe I am being attacked by an enemy that is wanting to destroy my faith and trust in God. I don't think God is standing idly by, enjoying the show. I think some of this is the reaping of bad risks in the past. Direct punishment from God? Maybe some of that, but I don't believe God wants to punish me, anymore than God wanted to punish the family in the tornado-destroyed trailer. I think we live in a fallen, sinful, broken world. God has power, but our decisions to embrace the stuff that gets in the way of our journey toward God have led to a great deal of our pain and suffering. But God, being good, does have a plan to redeem all of it. God wants to reward us 10, 100, 1000 times what we have lost. This doesn't mean that God is naive. God does not believe that we will just be fine, as long as God gives us lots of good stuff to distract us. God feels our pain and loss much more than we can. God has all the transcendence of being present at the birthing of the universe, yet is imminent enough to be involved in our pain and suffering to a divine level. The pain we feel in our limited, human capacity, God feels to the extent of God's unlimited capacity. In THAT lies my hope. I am not alone.

That, my friends, is the Jewish understanding of Job. It is not hopeless. Every story in the Jewish scriptures has, as its backdrop, the narrative of the Exodus. This is a God who rescues, a saving God. Who is like this YHWH in all of the universe? Hear, O Israel, the LORD, your God is ONE. Job is not a lesson. Job is a single person. We don't look at Job to see how we can suffer better. That would be the invalidation of the precious, life-transforming experience of this one man and his God. How God deals with Job is incredibly unique, as it is for every person who gives God permission to move and act as God will. I am not reliving the Book of Job. I am writing the Book of Bill, in partnership with God. Judaism has the Exodus. Christianity has the Exodus also. However, we also have the Second Exodus: The Cross. The Cross is the backdrop of every narrative we see and hear. For both Jews and Christians, there is hope that our suffering does not end in despair. There is hope that it all will be redeemed. How that happens and what that redemption looks like is all in God's hands.

God is a very real, personal, imminent Emmanuel. God with us. God is a very big, mighty, overwhelmingly transcendent Almighty Yahweh. God is Other. God is both/and at all times. God is not sometimes personal and imminent, and, at other times, powerful and transcendent. God is always both/and.

I am completely at the mercy of this God. I can't go back, and I can't move forward. I can make nothing happen at this moment. I am a slave to God's whim and will. I cannot force my own will here. I cannot will someone to hire me. I cannot will money to appear in my mailbox. I wait on God. I am being attacked. I am being tested. I am reaping consequences. I am being prepared and shaped. I am being redeemed. I am about to receive incredible reward. I will be forever scarred by this experience, but my scars become marks of God's glory. An old friend of mine once said, "I don't care if every single door in this life is slammed in my face, as long as the one door that is open to me is the door to God's Presence." She said that brilliantly.

At the same time, I am not a helpless victim. I am an active agent in all of this. I respond and interact with God. I speak my heart. I feel overwhelmed by mercy and generosity. I cry out in pain. I surrender in worship. I argue and defend. I make spectacular mistakes and have great successes. I grow, and I am shaped, by this living, dynamic narrative that I write with my God. My friend's quote above is actually, from her own experience and words, an almost direct quote from our friend Job. He says this:

"Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him." - Job 13:15

I journey toward an incredible God. That God encourages me, loves me, corrects my path, and feels every bruise and cut I receive. Best of all, that God doesn't stay at the finish line waiting. God runs to meet me and take me into a loving and fulfilling bear hug. I don't want to walk toward God. I want to run, fully embracing all of the implications of every victory, learning from the consequences of every failure, and seeing this whole journey as a redemptive pilgrimage of grace.

What has been your experience with suffering? Do you think our dealings with suffering shape us and make us, or are they to be endured and gotten over as quickly as possible? I would love your thoughts!

10/26/2011

I remember doing that little hand game as a small child, but I could never get it right. You know the one, right? You interlock all of your fingers, so that each second knuckle sticks up in a sort of roof. Then, in a sing-songy voice, you say, “Here is the church…” Lifting your two pinkies from the rest, you continue, “Here is the steeple…” You then move your two thumbs out 90 degrees, and say, “Open the doors…” At this point, the observer (usually a parent, because all of your friends have seen this a thousand times, and only your parents are actually patient enough to let food burn on the stove to watch your dumb, little, pre-PowerPoint presentation - they kinda have to…they’re parents) seems to be filled with edge-of-their-seat, goose-bumpy anticipation. What could possibly come next? You take a pregnant pause to let the tension percolate. Then, you release with the big payoff, flipping over your hands, triumphantly declaring, “And Here Are the People!!” You wiggle your now-upturned fingers for added affect, as if full revival is breaking out in your little hand church.

But not for me. I would have had my audience eating out of my hands for the whole presentation, if they hadn’t been clenched in church formation. My lead in was excellent. I would build and build up to the great payoff which would be….nothing. I couldn’t figure out how to lock my knuckles correctly. I had some kind of hand church disability, I think, because it would never work out. The problem was, I could not get through my thick head that I could not fold my hands in a prayer formation and have people be inside my church. Every time I did that little game in our house in Iron River, MI, there wouldn’t be people. I would be disappointed and sad, having let my mom down (everyone else had given up on me as the pastor of my hand church), and she would console me by patiently teaching me, again, how to do it. By that point, I was so frustrated that I had to set the whole endeavor aside and go play Legos until supper. I would try again tomorrow. It finally got to the point where I gave up and made my own version of the game. Instead of the classic punchline, I would, instead, say, “Where are all the people?” In that way, I was able to deliver an ending that was even more shocking and gripping than all of those other, finger-people-producing schmucks. They could keep their little finger revivals. My way was cooler, more surprising, and it provided social commentary on the decline of Christianity in the West, especially among steepled churches. I don’t know, though. In the end, I think my way was much less satisfying overall for myself and my audience.

I should have seen that game as prophetic. My inability to “do it right” left me feeling like something was wrong with me. I had some kind of internal flaw that prohibited my ability to accomplish what others of, in my estimation, less social and cognitive prowess could do without much effort. It was easy for them! I understood Poe and Shakespeare. I taught myself multiplication and division, even doing some rudimentary algebra, while my peers were still counting wrong, misspelling simple words, and leaving school after wetting their pants. Why could I not get that freakin hand church thing right!?!? My mom was always supportive. I think she was only teaching me over and over again, because I seemed to have a driving need to conquer it. Besides, who wants to go to the mom’s prayer group and admit that your kid is the only one who can’t get the church thing right?

“Get the prayer chain fired up, Gladys!! Jan’s kid either has a demon or he’s one of them “special” kids!!”

This whole thing continued well into adulthood. I never got the whole church thing right. Every Sunday, after working extremely hard all week to prepare an awesome sermon and a gathering that would be sincere enough to attract the lightning and thunder Glorious Presence of the Living God, I would find myself asking, “Where are all the people?” I would joke about it with the few people who showed up. I would make sure they knew how happy and grateful I was that they made it and just how important and precious they are to me and to God. I would smile, even though I knew we weren’t going to get paid again this week. I would make excuses. I would sincerely ask people what was wrong with me and my vision, submitting myself to them for critique and my vision to them for approval. I would get on my knees, crying, and beg God to PLEASE bring me some people! Please! Pretty Please?! I would tinker with the format. I would lament the space and environment. I would read books on church growth and models for successful church. I would get therapy and take medication. I would have my mom get the prayer chain fired up, because Jan’s boy is still demonized and special. I think my mom was even thinking of opening a healing center called, “The Jan Sergott Center for Mothers of Adult Children Who Don’t Do Church Good (JSCMACWDDCG for short). Where are all the people? I just couldn’t get my damn fingers to interlock correctly.

Then, I realized that all of those things I did to cope or change my circumstances were missing the mark. God showed me that somewhere along the way. I had to embrace the fact that I am a failed pastor. However, in embracing that, I also have to die to it. I cannot carry that as my identity. What makes me awesome? OK, so I can’t do the church thing right (though I did finally conquer that hand church thing….4 years ago, I think). I have no idea how to fix a car, and mechanics look at me with that “prayer-group-Gladys” look of pity, concern, and confusion as to what they should do about me - pat me on the head, feed me a doggy treat, or give me another pill. All I know is that the stupid car doesn’t work, and I want it to work. I feel like our black lab, Greta, when she was playing with a bunny in the backyard and accidentally killed it. Apparently a 110 pound dog wrestling with a 4oz rabbit is not a good prospect for the rabbit. Greta was so sad, as she brought us the contorted carcass of her playmate, set it down at our feet, and looked at us with an expectancy that said, “It’s not working anymore. Fix it?” I also suck at plumbing, gardening, home maintenance, general yard work, carpeting, cleaning, and, more than anything, making a living for my family. What the hell is wrong with me? I can’t say, “Well, I am just not a gifted provider for my family, so I’m not going to do that. I also struggle with the brain stem skill of pumping blood, so I’m quitting that as well.” I used to think I might just be lazy, but I’m not. I work my tail off at everything I do. I have been quickly promoted at every job I have held. I just can’t seem to make money. All of my peers have always seemed to be doing great, and I just can never seem to make it happen. Maybe I’m just a late bloomer. I am almost 41. Maybe I just need another decade or so to soak up some wisdom.

Recently, I noticed a shift. Yes, there was a shift in myself, as I have worked very hard on getting healthy and strong. I wanted to be one of God’s superstars, taking over this world for Jesus! Now, as long as I’m dwelling with Jesus, I could dig ditches and be happy. However God wants to use me is fine, and I am very free in that. If, in this season of my life, God wants me to be a failure pastor, I will be that with boldness and zeal. I will continue to train, prepare, work, and strive to be the best failure pastor I can be! That was a big shift in my life, but the biggest shift I noticed came in those around me. People started looking to me, many of them fellow pastors that I saw as being radically more gifted, intelligent and equipped than I, for counsel, direction, prayer, and hope. Now, in my poopy moments, I think that maybe they come to me to feel better about themselves and circumstances. “Man, my life and ministry and family and marriage and finances all suck right now. I’ll go talk to that “special” guy, Bill. At least I’m not as bad as he is…”

In reality, this wasn’t the case at all. After the fall of the economy, people got really messed up. Bad. Why? Because the model of our economy was one of the solid, everlasting Truths of American Life. It was a holy symbol and a reminder that God is in His Heaven and all is right with the world. Our confidence started to be shaken during the Vietnam War. The United States doesn’t ever lose wars. You can hang your hat on that one. OK, we lost a war. But, if we call it a “conflict” rather than a “war”, we are still undefeated. Well, the one thing we are sure of: No one would DARE attack Americans on U.S. Soil. Then came 9/11. The whole of reality was uncertain. Safety, itself, was questioned. Well, one thing we can still hang our hat on is the U.S. Economy! We have American Spirit and American Dreams! We will continue to make money, because THAT is what we are awesome at doing! Yes, things are a little more difficult, but the CEOs of Wall Street are Capitalists and True Americans. Surely, they we steer us back to prosperity, hope, and the fulfillment of dreams! If things get more difficult, they will sacrifice some of their own gains to help the country push forward. They are patriots! Besides, it doesn’t matter who’s in those places of power, the model, the economic machine, never breaks down!

All of a sudden, all of these pastors and leaders are in the same boat as I am. It turns out that they always were. I was just the only one dumb enough to always talk openly and freely about my failures. They would just switch models. I have seen many pastors get all the books and materials from Willow Creek. They study them, highlight them, teach them to their leadership teams and staffs, do conferences and seminars to learn them better, and even take pilgrimages with their entire board of directors to Barrington, Illinois (Mecca) to see the Dali Lama of the Higher Way of Churchness that is Willow Creek. They hope to catch something that sparks the success and power of the Willow Creek Model. They go racing home, excited to tell their whole church what they have caught in fresh vision, hope, and purpose! We have to get this model in place today! Is it too soon for an all-member church meeting? We’ll give it a year. We are going to see hearts come alive for Jesus! Lives will be changed and transformed! This is it for us! God led us to this place for sure! A year later, they have two new members to show for all of their visional renovations. Unfortunately, a family of five that had been with them for 10 years and 10 major visional renovations, finally got tired and left for a mainline denominational church that just wanted to find Jesus. So, this church netted −3 people in this year of vision and growth. “Wait!” shouts the youth minister during the depressing evaluation meeting, “I heard Rob Bell has stepped down as pastor in order to put together new models of church! He is doing a seminar in a city only 200 miles from here! It starts tonight! I have my keys, and we can grab food on the way!” They argue over who gets “shotgun” as they race to the parking lot with real hope this time.

Willow Creek is not the problem in this hypothetical scenario. Bill Hybels is an incredible leader, pastor, and visionary. Their church has been wildly successful. Many people have come to know Jesus in an authentic and life-changing way through their ministry. There is a great deal we can all learn from Willow Creek. Also, I don’t think Rob Bell is actually doing seminars on new models of church. The problem: Models fail. Always. There are people everywhere searching for the perfect program, model, or formula. The diet industry is worth billions every year, each individual diet guaranteeing immediate and dramatic results. None of them work, but no one takes advantage of the money back guarantee. Why? Because we find it much easier to believe that we are the problem. The problem couldn’t possibly with the system. I suck. The diet is perfect. This model of church is perfect. I’m the failure.

Those are all lies that I, and most of the human race, have adopted into our minds and hearts. As a result, We have lost all sense of innovation. I have started reading the new Steve Jobs biography. He was an amazing man. He had incredible issues and could be a really lousy human being, but he was amazing as an innovator and creator. Rather than making cookie cutter copies of computer models already in the marketplace, he designed and built technologies that the public was not aware they needed or even wanted! We need more innovators. The problem is not with you or with me. The problem is with our models. I’m just starting to grapple with this, but I have a tiny suspicion that maybe I’m not defective after all… Those are just some thoughts from a failed pastor.

10/13/2011

Getting back from Colorado Springs has been interesting. I was reflecting on how much I enjoy that conference each year. It is my favorite time to get together with my Vineyard family. This is not only because of the gorgeous setting, though that doesn’t hurt at all. It is all about the people.

Because it is, specifically, a mission leaders meeting, all of the people who attend have a common mission. Jesus, throughout the Gospels, talks about unity. Paul harps on unity over and over again. It seems to be pretty important to those guys, so maybe it should be a little more important to us, as followers of Jesus in community. When I go to that conference, there is such a genuine and abiding warmth, humility, and love, it is unlike anything else I do as a pastor. Pastors are notorious for posturing. How many you running on a Sunday morning now? WE have had explosive growth! We have doubled in size since the last conference! That’s right! 100% growth in one year! I don’t know, I’m thinking about talking to the Big Cheese about becoming a regional director. I hope that isn’t thinking too small…

All the time that “Pastor Joe” is saying that, he is internally panicked that you remember he had only 10 people last year, so 100% growth is not all that impressive. I’ve never gotten into all that. I think 10 new people in a year is something to be celebrated! That is 10 people who have found a home in your community. Even if, by 10 new members, you are counting their children, pets, and extended family from out of state, whom you might see on major holidays, there is a rooting and an anchoring taking place in those people. That should be celebrated. However, it is uncool to celebrate. Just watch any post-game coverage for any professional sport.

“Yes, we won 49-0, but we got lucky. They have a great team. They are very dangerous, even though they picked up their QB today…right before the game…through a fan raffle…. You never know what that septic tank cleaner might have done, if our linebacker hadn’t put him in the hospital on the first snap. I hear he already remembers his name, so that’s hopeful. Our prayers go out to him and his family. Playoffs? No, we aren’t thinking of the playoffs. We aren’t celebrating this victory, either. No, we are thinking about Minnesota next week. Yes, they are the worst team in the league. I can’t believe they still have professional sports there… But when their QB is on his meds, and they shoot him up with Novocain, HGH, and pure adrenaline pre-game, he can be really dangerous. Yes, I heard his surgery to remove the prehensile tail was successful. I can’t really comment on that, because it seems like it just grew after they played Detroit. Maybe it’s all the chemicals… Anyway, our prayers go out to him and his family. Sans tail, he is a lot harder to tackle.”

Taking victories in stride - in other words, ignoring them - is considered good taste. It is seen as humility. When living in a world in despair, I think that is the opposite of what we need to be as church, as a community, and as human beings. God seems to celebrate everything! The prodigal son ends in a huge party, celebrating…what? He spent his entire inheritance. He took up with prostitutes and criminals. He was found eating out of troughs for pigs. What is left to celebrate? He should feel lucky to be alive, and he should have to endure months of rebuke, correction, and re-education. Instead, there is a party, just because the idiot managed to not die. It is a miracle that this kid has enough brain activity to pump blood! Let’s celebrate! He’s come home! Without a GPS!

We are so focused on being cool, clever, ironic, and relevant, that we completely miss the chance to geek out over some of the great things that God does in our lives. Instead of trading the ashes of our burnt lives in for beauty, we have exchanged our joy for cynicism and sarcastic wit. Now, this is not to deny that our larger culture is moving steadily toward cynicism and rebellion. I am not denying the need to be culturally relevant to the people who don’t know Jesus. We cannot just abandon them to their despair. But, I never see Jesus trying to outdo the people of his time with rebellion or complaining. He felt that joy and hope were the most powerfully relevant values to offer to a despairing generation. He transferred those values through unabashed, geeky, cheesy, embarrassing Love. His level of love is ridiculous. We need to emulate that love.

As I was in the mountains, I drove past Long’s Peak. I was reflecting on a trip I took as a teenager, where we did a peak ascent on Long’s as part of a week-long retreat. I remember complaining on that entire trip. I actually loved the trip, but it was part of my makeup to complain.

We had a prayer time, led by my friend and mentor, Marcus Cunningham, who is now an Episcopal Vicar in Kansas. Marcus is a wonderful guy. I see God just delighting in him. He has always been a hippy. He has never been big on things like government, meat, or bathing. When I was an adult, I actually had the chance to minister with Marcus, working full time with him at a retreat center outside of Chicago. One day, we were having guy time, just hanging out in his domicile on the retreat center property. We were sitting around talking philosophy and theology, which tends to make both of us hungry. I asked him if he had anything to eat. He said that ice cream sounded delicious, and I agreed. He was going to get the bowls, and I was tasked with getting the half-gallon ice cream container out of the freezer. There were two in there, so I grabbed the one closest to the door, the label indicating that a vanilla, chocolate swirl awaited our consumption inside. On my way to the counter, I proceeded to open the container, and was met with something that was definitely, at least in my frozen dairy experience, not chocolate swirl ice cream. It was bright red and gelatinous. Marcus….what is this?

“Oh!” he proudly exclaimed, “That’s not ice cream! That’s the placenta from Naomi’s birth! We are so excited, because this spring we are going to plant a placenta tree, where we bury the placenta under the roots of the sapling. We offer it up as a prayer for Naomi’s life!”

I didn’t hear most of that. I set the container down and left, no longer hungry for ice cream.

So, years before the placenta incident, Marcus was leading this prayer time for us in Colorado. He had us take a slice of a log that we had found fallen in the woods, and we had to pray about a value or character trait for which we wanted to be known. We also had to pray about an animal with which we identified. We were then to burn into the piece of wood our trait and animal, and we were to begin to take it on as a name for ourselves. We were all in a circle around the fire that night, ready to share our name and explain its significance. Everyone had some really profound identifications, and most of the people were crying because of the depth of healing God was doing in their identities. I always went for the joke. My name was “Sarcastic Cougar”. I saw my sarcastic, sharp wit as a charism (spiritual gift) from God. I said all of this with a smile on my face, proud of my ability to take nothing seriously. I felt so cool and “above it all” as I talked about how cool I was. All these people were buying into this cheesy, emotional crap. I was way beyond them. When I was finished, Marcus looked at me across the circle and said, “Thanks, Bill. I will pray for you. I want God to show you that you have an identity that is much deeper and more powerful than that. I pray that you will leave this identity behind.”

I felt like an idiot. I was an idiot. I was embarrassed, and my response was to be defiant. That piece of log is in a box somewhere in my basement. As I am cleaning, I can’t wait to find it and burn it. Marcus did me a huge favor that day. He continued as we worked side by side. I have always been a hard worker. Anytime I am taking on a job that is new for me, however, I complain. I do the job, but I complain. Marcus would gently and lovingly ask me to stop. Most of the time I wasn’t even aware I was doing it. My cynicism, sarcasm, and negativity had become a deep-rooted, behavioral habit. My whole life I have gone for the joke. I was voted “Most Likely to Make You Laugh” by my senior class. My wife has worked endlessly with me to see that, just because something is funny, it doesn’t mean it needs to be said. As I was driving around Colorado Springs with my friend Omar, we were trying to find a music station. There seemed to be only Evangelical preaching. I made a bunch of comments, and we both had a laugh. But, you know what? Those guys didn’t deserve it. I turned off the radio and told Omar that I hated my negativity and cynicism. I hated that I immediately dismissed all of them as useless in the Kingdom, because their style didn’t match my own. I couldn’t relate to them, so, in my mind, no one could. It just gets to the point where I get sick of hearing myself speak. Have you ever been there? I had gotten to the point where I didn’t even enjoy hanging out with myself. I had become an insufferable bore. To myself!

I have found that I no longer have a tolerance for that kind of negativity and rejection of humanity. I simply don’t have the stomach for it anymore. I find that our culture’s tendency to exalt the sarcastic and negative has really wrecked a lot of good people. Rebels bore me. I think those people (including myself), who feel the need to always make negative comments, to be really uninteresting, even when others think they are funny or clever. The dark, brooding, anti-social person (including myself) is no longer my hero. I no longer see that person as above it all. I see them (including myself) as being desperate for connection and unable to control their behaviors. I don’t approach this from a legalistic place. I just want to start weeding it out of my life. Hopefully, like Marcus was for me, I can be a person who, by example, leads others back into joy, freedom, and celebration.

I love that missions conference, because those people have found the unity that seemed so important to Jesus, Paul, and others. Many of them face death almost daily. Others have spent years in the excrement of human existence. They have lost money, time, relationships, and comfort, and they have sacrificed everything for the sake of the call on their lives. If anyone has a right to whine and complain, these people are the poster children for that right. No one would begrudge them a periodic side trip into venting about the hardships of life. Not only do they refrain from such straying, but they celebrate every single person that finds hope in Jesus. They celebrate like the father, when his son returns home. That is what I want my legacy to be. I want to be known for my joy and my over-the-top celebration of the lives of real people.

I still enjoy a good joke. I was at a shoe store recently, and the clerk kept bugging me. I always like to be left alone when I shop. Finally, when he approached me to ask if I needed help for the 5th time, I went for the joke.

“OK, maybe you can help me after all. I am looking for a casual, comfortable leather loafer. It has to be stylish and well-made. Oh, yeah, and it is REALLY important that it is resistant to blood splatter and human tissue stains…”

Sometimes old habits are hard to break. His reaction was worth the indulgence.

Have you had to battle negativity in your life? Am I making too big of a deal of this? How do you navigate a very cynical world without losing the Joy of following Jesus? How does all of this affect your faith and worldview?

09/26/2011

A quick note from me: I am so excited to be swapping blogs today with Merritt, a professional writer and blogger over at Live.Simply.Love, a blog about the challenges, victories, trials, and joys of marriage. She comes at the topic with a fairly unique perspective. She got married a little later in life, which, I believe, gives her a depth, maturity, and wisdom that would rival anyone I know. I wish I had possessed a fraction of that on my wedding day. Enjoy this post and comment! Then, when you are finished, I am guest posting on her blog today, at Live.Simply.Love, so head over there to read and comment as well! I love experiencing writers for the first time, and I am sure you will see just how delightful and brilliant today's guest is. Without further adieu, here is her post:

I met Jesus when I was 30 years old. Before that, we were just acquaintances. He was the kind of “friend” that I’d heard about as a child in the most boring, yet-seemingly-threatening-because-I-didn’t-know-all-the-stories, Sunday School classes I attended at my family’s church. I’d seen Him in pictures, usually carrying a lamb. And of course, I’d seen Him on crosses in my grandparents’ homes, but I totally didn’t get why such a gruesome thing would be on their walls. There were birthday cards with Bible verses (and more sheep) and “blessings” wished to me from relatives I rarely saw. And of course at Christmas we sang about the birth of Christ. So, I’d heard of Him, but I didn’t really know Him.

In fact, the more I heard about Him, the more I didn’t understand what the fascination was for some people. In my teens and twenties, Jesus was the furthest thing from my mind. I figured He would try to steal my fun, my joy. He represented the RULES I didn’t want to follow. So I turned away from anything resembling Him or His rules, and I made my life all about me, my way, my wants, desires, and needs. Therefore, getting up early on a Sunday morning to go hear about someone I didn’t know—didn’t WANT to know—made no sense to me at all.

Plus, I thought was living a pretty decent life. I didn’t NEED God. I did well in school. I was generally a nice person. I was recognized for community service and good citizenship. I followed most of the rules society set out for me… at least the ones I WANTED to follow. (And when I wasn’t following the rules, I made sure it was in hiding, so at least no one would know.)

I thought if I did all that I would receive the approval and attention I desperately desired from others. And in fact, my needs went far, far deeper than that.

I wanted to be popular. I wanted to fit in. I wanted a boyfriend who would love me unconditionally (and that every other girl would admire me for dating). I wanted to be the star of everything I did. In my parents’ eyes I was, for a while. And then it was no longer my parents I was trying to impress. And that became a vicious cycle of impossibilities.

I lived on the fuel of other people’s attention and affection. I did everything I could to please those outside of me, to perform to such a standard that would yield the love I desired. I could never reach it, though I was starved for it. There was never enough. Which in turn caused me to strive all the more to feed the hungry beast inside of me. Until one day I finally saw the striving for what it was. Useless. Strange as it might seem, that was years after I met Jesus.

The impetus of finally seeing Him for who He is came out of the devastation I felt at the end of yet-another-relationship where I’d sought out someone just like me. We both walked away reeling from the destruction left in the path of our unquenchable needs and our mutual inability to fill them for each other. I was finally at the end of my rope. I was done trying to figure it out on my own.

By then I’d already been sensing the call of Jesus for some time. He’d been introduced to me in a new way. Not through a bunch of rules for me to follow but in a Person who loved me deeply and wanted to do the work to be in relationship WITH ME. What?? I thought people liked me because of what I could do for them.

This was a completely foreign concept to me. I couldn’t earn His love. It just was. In fact, all that I’d done my whole life in turning away from Him earned my separation from Him. But there He was. Calling to me. Telling me there was a better way. Asking me to rest in His yoke, in His peace, in His grace. To receive the gift He was offering at no cost to me (but at great cost to Him). I didn’t understand it, but I knew it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever experienced. And it was what I’d always been searching for.

But then there was church. It was much different than I remembered as a child. No pictures of Jesus carrying sheep this time. This was the Bible Belt. It was a BIG church, with BIG worship, a BIG production, a BIG experience. It fed something fleshly in me. And it wasn’t long before I fell right back into the same-old-same-old: wanting to be liked, trying to do the right thing, desiring to fit in, be approved of, get recognition, and gain reputation…now by being a good Christian girl. I’d already stopped sleeping with my boyfriends. In fact, I broke up with boyfriends when I discovered they didn’t really love Jesus. I’d stopped partying. He’d already changed my heart in so many ways…yet there was something about His Church that was still a tough pill to swallow.

It was a Sunday morning in March 2007 after our pastor had taught on kindness. And I drove away from church sobbing. (Seems odd, I know.) But I walked away from that sermon feeling as if I needed to live up to a set of expectations that were impossible to meet. I felt heavy, burdened, and overwhelmed.

In my performance-driven mind, all I heard was that I must be more kind, more loving, be a better servant, and do certain things to show the world that I’m a “good Christian.” I thought I was already doing everything thing I could. The message played into my perfectionistic nature, my people pleasing, my desire to control, and my inclination to perform to make sure I am living up to the standard, but this time it was the “good Christian” standard. If I could just do these things, then I’d be right with God. But it was a lie exposed, and it broke my heart.

I thought all the striving was over. I struggled with what I’d heard that sounded like, This is what you need to do. And I was spent. I’d already been doing all that I knew to do. Trying as hard as I’d ever tried. And it was never enough.

That Sunday, I wanted to blame it on the pastor for not preaching the gospel of grace to me as I needed to hear it. But what I most needed to hear was the small strong voice whispering in my ear that my performance was like dirty rags. I thought my greatest sin had been my promiscuity before I knew Jesus. But I now believe the message Jesus wanted me to see more than anything is that it’s NOT about what I do. He spoke that truth loudly to me that day in the midst of my frustration over where I was and how I was being taught.

In fact, I still WANTED to earn His approval. Deep down inside I believed I could, even though the truth I knew told me differently. And I was reminded again that I am powerless over my tendency to do the wrong thing. And that’s not just limited to being unkind. It also includes my desire to be kind in order to be liked.

At the risk of alienating our host because of his recent mention of this very same verse (sorry Bill), it was around that time when Psalm 37:4 became clearer to me. "Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will grant you the desires of your heart." I’ve always been more interested in the second part of that verse—the granting of my heart’s desires by God—rather than the first part—delighting myself in Him.

But it’s exactly what He wanted me to eventually see in the midst of this struggle. I can fight all day long against the forces of this world (human and otherwise) and try to blame others for the sickness in my heart. But the truth is, as long as I’m after my desires rather than Him, the fight will be futile and the result will be empty.

On August 21, 2007, the note written in my bible next to Psalm 37:4 says, “to know Him.” Whether I acknowledge it or not, the true pure desire of my heart is to KNOW GOD, and as I delight myself in Him, I will know Him better, and my heart will be at peace. Everything else is still just striving.

Lord, thank you for exposing my pride, performance, and blame-shifting through the also flawed humans you’ve placed around me. I pray that my heart may more deeply desire you, that I would take Your yoke upon me and learn from You, for you are gentle and humble in heart and with You I will find rest for my soul (Matthew 11:29). Thank you that your burden is light. Amen.

What burdens or lies are you carrying that keep you from seeing Jesus as who He really is or from seeing His loves as it really is?

09/16/2011

I remember long trips in the car as a kid, and the anticipation of finally getting home. "MOOOOOOOOMM!!! ARE WE THERE, YET??" When are we going to get home?

I remember waking up one night as a child, screaming and wailing. When my mom came in and tried to console me, I remember just repeating over and over that I wanted to go home. But, Bill... You are home...

"Home" was also my favorite X-Files episode. If you like it as well, you are a sick, twisted individual. Let's hang out!

In searching for buildings for our church community, I just always wanted a home. But home seems to be fantasy, pure imagination, or maybe something my daughter, Maggie, made up. Home is like unicorns. You hear Christians all the time talking about looking for a home community. We pastors refer to shiny buildings as our church home. "Home" is a magic word.

For me, it has very little to do with brick and mortar. "Home" conjures up images of security, peace, a sigh of contentment, a warm fire, loved ones, familiarity, and my domain. But does it exist? We have been looking for this fantastical place since we first drew breath as a species. Abraham was a nomad, being promised a place that was not his own, though it didn't seem to belong to the current occupants at the time, either. Isaac, the child of the promise, was also nomadic, never truly settling down. Jacob was the usurper and thief. Did his soul ever find the rest he sought? He seemed truly alive and happy, only when wrestling with God. Joseph, son of Israel, seemed to be the only one who seemed to have felt hopeful and at home in the land. So, God orchestrated a plan to have him sold into slavery and thrown into an Egyptian prison, seemingly with the overall goal of taking the entire nation of Israel out of their promised home for 400 years.

Moses led them back. He, himself, was a misplaced Hebrew child, raised in the courts of the Pharaoh. For a brief time, we were all back home, yet the restlessness remained. Though our physical roots were planted, our hearts continued to wander, constantly in conflict with what we most desired and causing a repeating cycle of apostasy. We had what we thought had been promised, yet we could not settle the anxiousness of our frayed nerves.

A king! That's the answer! If we could rule ourselves, then we will truly be at home. We are only restless, because our ruler, God, is far from us. We need a king who is one of us. So, God relented and gave us our king. After David and Solomon, royal history was a long succession of sinful and destructive kings, their fatal flaw being a shared restlessness of the soul; in other words, being human. Instead of being an answer to prayer, the kings actually led us into losing our physical rootedness in our promised land. We were sent into exile. Our place of worship, our church home, was destroyed. Not that it mattered. The Presence of our God had departed a long time before that, and we were completely unaware. Strangers in a strange land. We had lost our promised home.

But, we had been warned. Many prophets, homeless themselves, had spoken the call to our hearts. The call to come home. We didn't understand, because we were home already, weren't we? Yet their call was persistent, and their voices made us long for more, grated on our nerves, and nagged at our consciousness. Come Home. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Hosea, and many others, marching on in an endless stream of sound that we conveniently put to the back of our minds, like white noise or the bustling deluge of a city. They called with the voice of our God, the source of our lives, and we responded with annoyance and condescension.

So, God showed up in Person. Jesus. He was our whole history, present, and future in one flesh. He was Adam, the prototype of man. He was Abraham, the carrier of the promise. He was Moses, in exile and slavery, yet pointing toward a reachable home. He was David, the King. He was Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, who's foundations had been put in place by the new Elijah, John the Baptist. He was the Voice of God, the very Word of God, prophet without equal. He came as the High Priest and the Temple, itself! The Presence of God was back! ....and, again, we were completely unaware.

He was, and IS, the Messiah, the Promised One, who would give us the desires of our hearts. What is that desire? Is it fame? Fortune? Immortality? If you had one wish, would you wish for the affections of a beautiful woman, to never have to work again, or to be without sickness or pain? No, Jesus didn't come to give us any of that. The Messiah was here to give us the desire of all of our hearts, of which we remain as unaware as we were of God's previous departure. He came to bring us Home. But not to take us home, as we have, in our silly and limited short-sightedness, come to believe.

This place sucks. Get me out of here!

But we know that is not right. Deep down, we know it. He promised us this land. Our God does not lie. Our God is not capable of untruth.

C'mon! We are slaves here. Exiles. Strangers in a strange land. Aliens. Unwelcome. Unwanted. Not of this world. We are physically planted in this soil, even made of it, yet we long for Home. We look to our Savior and Messiah. Are You, Jesus, the Promised Hope of Israel? Or should we look for another? You aren't talking the way we'd expect. You're talking like Jeremiah, who told us to pray for the prosperity of the land of our exile. To put down roots, marry their people, and work to help prosper their nation. As slaves, we don't want to hear that we should be "noticing the flowers" or "eating like the birds". We want to kick their asses! We want to feast! We want to celebrate! Wipe them out, trash this awful place, filled with famine and disease and war and death, and beam us out! If you aren't going to beam us out, at least beam ME out! Stop talking about me turning MY heart back to God. I am not the bad one, here! I am the VICTIM! Look at these Romans, who tax us to death and then pick the scraps of our carcasses clean. Look at these Pharisees and Sadducees, they are lower than lawyers and politicians! They are the lowest! They have sold our faith, what there was of it, to the Romans in exchange for a place as puppets and jesters at the Emperor's table. The gristle and skin of our corpses, left behind as inedible and distasteful by the Romans, becomes their share of the inheritance. They lap it up like dogs! KILL THEM, JESUS, AND LET'S GET OUT OF HERE!!

Yet Jesus kept telling us to love them. Pray for them. Embrace them. He selected wanderers and vagabonds as his followers. These were restless men, longing to see Home. They doubted, fought, argued, betrayed, and made plays for power for when they got to go home with Jesus. He talked about dying, and they talked about ruling. He talked about love, and they talked about revenge. He demonstrated intimacy with God, and they ran away and hid from danger. You see, Jesus had no intentions of taking us somewhere else. He did come to bring us Home, but not as we thought. Or still think. He did not die to be my "personal lord and savior", much like my personal chef or personal trainer. He came to bring Home to us! To bring it here! We asked for a king to be one of us, and God provided us with God as King. We wanted Heaven, and God proposed the ridiculous: You can't get to Heaven, so I will bring Heaven to You! Light shines in the darkness, and we dwellers and wanderers in darkness cannot understand it. And you know what? The Messiah offering this foolish idea, to bring us our Home, was, Himself, homeless! He was definitely one of us. He knew what it was to have the anxiety of having no place to lay His head. He had no home, no family, and no peace. Then He died to make this audacious plan possible and to seal God's promise in Blood.

What do all of the many historical attempts listed above have in common? God is not in any of them. Some of them started off as something God seemed to be blessing. Unfortunately, they quickly became ends in themselves, rather than the means to get there. Others were doomed to fail before they started. Still others seem to be evil at their core. I'm almost afraid to say it, but it seems like all that's left is Jesus' way. Have we finally reached the end of ourselves? Or, am I tempting humanity to find new and exciting ways to radically miss the point, simply by raising the question? There are many such failures that I didn't even list above. One that stands out is the Nation of Israel embracing Zionism, which hits the very point I am making in this post. We still think God is in a particular place, and that place is home. The Land. It's all about the Land for us. When will God's "true people" reclaim the Land? God is not even there. There is no longer anything holy about the soil of that land, in and of itself. God is not invested at all in the political nation-state of Israel. As a matter of fact, it seems like they have overstepped their bounds. They have violated the proclamation of Moses in Exodus 33: "Unless you go with us, God, we will not go."

The dirt is not holy ground. It is now just dirt. They will not build another Temple, even though many American Christians have poured money into the area to do just that, hoping it will force Jesus to come back sooner. We don't mention that to the Jewish people. Nor do we tell them that we need an ally strategically positioned in the Middle East, in order to protect our oil interests. That money has not helped build the Kingdom of God, but has gone into more tanks and guns with which to terrorize and dispossess the people of Palestine. How is God in that, when Palestinians are also at home as God's children? Israel is grabbing, again, for home, land, and a strong sense of nationalism. God chose and blessed Israel, only to bless all of the nations through Israel. Instead, they believe God chose them to rule over other nations. As they were warned in the time of the kings, this thinking will lead only to exile.

So what is home, if not buildings, land, or soil? Well, as I have looked for buildings for worship, temples of my own making, I have only found emptiness. In trying to feel at home, I have felt cast adrift in a land of exile. While wandering in the desert for the 40 years of my life, I have longed for the promised land, only to miss the fact that God was in my camp already. I was so busy cursing the conditions of my wasteland, that I missed the Glory of God all around my tent. While in exile, I have failed to put down roots, raise a family, and pray for the prosperity of this place and these people. In all of that, God's departure has, again and again, escaped my notice. Where is home? Wherever God is Present. It has nothing to do with some stupid strip of dirt, yet millions of people have spilled blood for the sake of possessing the dirt. It has nothing to do with leaving, yet our tiny gospel is all about dying and going to heaven, raptures, and the earth being consumed. AGGHHHHH!! I get so pissed at how badly we miss the point! Jesus is standing right in front of us with tears in His eyes and His healing Blood dripping from His hands. He calls us to help Him bring Heaven here and to establish His rule and reign forever. Yet we grab for political power and earthly dominion, thinking that's what he wants Christians to possess. That is exactly what Satan offered to Jesus in the third temptation. How freakin stupid! As if we were ever a Christian Nation! There's no such thing! No national agendas, governments, founders, or economic models have EVER been of God. In fact, they are all filthy rags in comparison to God's Kingdom.

Establishing the Kingdom of God on this earth has no relationship with politics or public policy. It has nothing to do with borders or treaties. Religions, Temples, denominations, doctrines, and moralistic principles are like excrement before God. It is not based in bloodlines, ideologies, or socio-economic status. God does not respect persons.

Jesus taught us and demonstrated for us how to help extend His Kingdom: Preach Good News to the Poor, Heal the Sick, Declare Sight to the Blind, Command the Deaf to Hear, the Lame to Walk, Proclaim Freedom for the Captives, and the Year of the Lord's Favor! I'm sticking with Jesus, because I know He will bring me home.

What does this all have to do with church buildings? Next time.

"You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right."

Maya Angelou

What do you make of this quote? Have you beeen home, yet longed for Home? How do you define "Home"? What would it be like? How do you know it is Home?

09/08/2011

I have taken WAY too much time off from blogging. I was at a conference in Chicago, and then I had to move all of our stuff out of our church building, a soon-to-be-blogged-about adventure. In the middle of that, Sunday was my wife's birthday! She turned 29 (deja vu).

Teresa and I met in 1991, when we came from two different parts of the country. She is the daughter of Cuban physicians, political refugees from the Cuban Missile Crisis. She moved around a lot as a girl, but they eventually settled in Atlanta for her high school years. She was the youngest of 4 children, all of her siblings being at least 9 years older than she. Teresa had a brother, Raul, who filled her with a passion and obsession with theater and music. He was one of the founders of the Atlanta Shakespeare Company, and he was brilliant and wonderful. I had the privilege of meeting Raul before he died of AIDS-related causes in 1992. Because of Raul's work of indoctrination, Teresa loved fine art, gourmet foods, hand-made furniture, Broadway, ballet, and meals that require a minimum of 5-6 forks. She went to Villanova University in Philadelphia, where she studied Theology and Theater (theoretically incompatible, but identical in praxis). She was in a sorority, enjoyed rowing competitions, and drank fine wines.

Then she met me, a hick from Wisconsin, who flunked out of college twice (UWGB and NWTC. I believe, to this day, I am the only person in history to flunk out of both of those schools), loved the Green Bay Packers, had a jean jacket and a ferocious mullet, drank cheap beer by the gallon, considered Led Zeppelin to be classical music, thought those 3D pictures at the mall were fine art, fished constantly, played drums in a Motley Crue cover band, and loved meals that involved meat, cheese, deep frying, and no forks whatsoever (if the whole meal was deep fried meat and cheese on a stick, it was orgasmic). Teresa did not like me.

We met on a Catholic missionary team, called NET (National Evangelization Teams). Click HERE to go to the NET Ministries Archive Page, scroll down to Team 5, and click on the picture. It will expand with our names. Teresa is standing right in front of me in the picture.

I was going to post it here, but if you want to see a bad, early-90s picture of me, I'm going to make you work for it.

We toured the United States and Canada with our team of 11 people packed in a single van. We received $75 per month (which we had to raise, ourselves, in sponsorship before embarking - God, I love ministry), and we were permitted a small suitcase, a backpack, and a sleeping bag. We did hundreds of retreats and conferences in a nine month period from 2011-2012. There were 10 teams in all, and I ended up with Teresa on my team. From day one, she hated me with the intensity of a thousand suns.

She was this fiery Latina Woman. Yes, I capitalized the "W" on purpose. She was the most overwhelming, untamed creature I had ever seen. She was this vortex of unbridled, feminine fury. She had a glorious mane of curly, midnight-black hair, which radiated around her beautifully tan face like a halo of wickedness and doom. She had the deepest brown eyes, so dark as to almost be pure onyx, and teeth so perfect and white, they were difficult to gaze upon. She was voluptuously curvy in all the right places. She was power, passion, fire, and storm in human flesh. When God imagined Woman, Teresa was the picture. She was better than deep fried ribs on a stick. She was better than many kegs of Busch Light Draft. Teresa, for me, was pure indulgence, luxury, and temptation. I knew, immediately, that this Woman was my undoing.

We fought. Constantly. I was totally drawn into her, but I wanted to simultaneously strangle her. Every nasty comment from her was met with a return shot from me. Cuba vs. Poland. Two communist-oppressed powerhouses of stubbornness meet in the fight of the century. It went on like that for a long time. It was bloody, and it was brutal.

NET was a very conservative Catholic organization, with all the beauty and the baggage of the traditional Roman Church. Don't get me wrong. I loved that year of ministry. We need to always be honest though. When the time came, on Valentine's Day weekend in 1992, for me to briefly leave the team for the weekend to help my youth pastor from home with a retreat, NET wasn't going to let me go alone. I "needed support", because of the liberal Diocese of Green Bay. They might lead me astray. There were no romantic or exclusive relationships allowed on NET. This actually made sense, because we all had to live together in community for the year. Romance and break-ups would not be conducive to having all of us live in the shalom of Christian, brotherly love. So, they wanted to send one of my "brothers" from my team with me. However, our team was scheduled to do a retreat for an all-boys high school, so they were all needed there. NET had a problem. They couldn't send a man, because they all had work to do. They couldn't send a woman, or we might engage in hanky-panky. They couldn't send me alone, for fear of apostasy. Wait! I know what to do! Send Teresa with him! Those two can't stand each other! Perfect.

We fell madly in love. Well...I did, anyway. I went to lunch with my mom and brother, afterward, and I boldly announced that I have met the Woman who is "The One". My mom told me I was always so dramatic, and to eat my vegetables. Not to be deterred from my passionate pursuit, I went back to my host home and prayed about what God wanted me to do about Teresa. May as well try God. I played Bible Bingo. It's kind of like using the Bible as a Magic 8 Ball. Here are the basic rules:

1) Close Your Bible.

2) Ask God a Question.

3) Pop Open Your Bible To a Random Passage.

4) Read Whatever First Catches Your Eye. That's Your Answer*.

* NOTE: If you open to a passage on the proper, Kosher castration of bulls, return to Step 1.

Now, this method is not advisable if you are a scriptural literalist, or if you want any kind of a real, meaningful answer from the True God. So, I embraced this practice frequently, with mixed results. But, this time, I hit Pay Dirt! My Bible fell open to Psalm 37:4: "Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will grant you the desires of your heart."

Awesome! The next day, I took Teresa aside from the team, took both of her arms firmly in my hands, looked deeply into her endless eyes, and proclaimed my love and intentions: "Teresa, I am in love with you, and I'm going to marry you one day! We can't do anything about it now, because it is against the rules of NET, but as soon as this year is finished, I plan to pursue you and marry you! Isn't that great?!?"

Teresa responded, with a shocked look on her face, "I can't believe you said that! That's so inappropriate! Now, shut up, and get out of my face!"

Not to be deterred from my passionate pursuit, I continued to wait and pray. God had promised her to me. I was crazy about her! I couldn't get enough of her intoxicating Womanness. She was dark, brooding, and hilarious. She made me want to read more, go to the ballet, and eat something with a fork! I wanted to try a drink that wasn't featured on a NASCAR vehicle! I was changing, just being near her. There were three aspects of Teresa that especially grabbed me. First, as I stated earlier, was her powerful femininity, brilliant mind, and fatal beauty. She was a force of nature that I couldn't avoid. Secondly, I couldn't sell her. I was always selling people on me. I was always looking for people to buy into me. I could charm, persuade, and motivate people to think I was awesome. I could even sell myself on me. Teresa never bought it. She saw through me from the beginning. This unattainable nature made me crazy and made me want her all the more.

The third thing was, by far, the most irresistible, attractive factor for me. I have never seen this in a person before or since. It was her Voice. Yes, I capitalized the "V" on purpose. When God imagined singers to raise their voices in worship, Teresa's Voice was the picture. When she first led worship, I had never experienced God in such a way. Her voice transported me to the very Throne of Jesus, and I fell on my face in awe. It's hard to explain. There are people who may be better technical singers. That's fine and good. I am not even arguing that Teresa is the best singer in the world. There is a nuclear fusion of all of Teresa's passion and fire, her heartbreak and rage, her dreams and secret hopes, and her intimacy and vulnerability, that enters her audacious, smoky, rich voice and creates an almost elemental, physical substance. When she sings a regular song, it's always really good. But when she gets into that place of intimacy with the Almighty, then something entirely Other is unleashed. You take off your shoes, because you are suddenly on Holy Ground. You fall on your face, because the Presence of the Divine is so heavy as to not allow standing. Teresa's Voice seems to be like catnip for God. God's delight in Teresa is tangible in that moment. It may seem like I am exaggerating, but many people have said similar things to me. It is actually like God breaks into the space/time continuum, and God has to squeeze, because of the immensity of God's Presence. Then you feel like this is kind of uncomfortable, because Teresa and God are meeting, binding, and connecting in an intimacy that can only be compared to accidentally walking into a honeymoon suite of another couple. When Teresa goes to that place, I always feel like an intruder, yet privileged to be permitted to be present in such intimate union. I also got the sense that she welcomes people to come with her into this space, but has no care whether they do or not. She is going, even if she goes alone. I find that so refreshing in a church world, filled with a surplus of cookie-cutter, superstar worship leaders who seem more interested in posturing, appearing cool, and getting recording contracts, than in the Presence of God. I wanted to never attempt to approach God without that Voice to carry me, ever again. In my own quiet time, I could get within sight of God. But, Teresa's Voice picked me up and set me on God's lap, with his arms around my whole self. For a guy who has no memory of ever being hugged by, or just held in the arms of, a fatherly figure, this was the most exhilarating and wonderful experience of my life.

You see, Teresa has a special place in the heart of God. You just get the sense that God is really fond of her. She's His treasure. I have that kind of feeling for both of my daughters, but my love pales in comparison. It just seems like God would do anything for her. She has Him wrapped around her finger.

Tragically, she suffered sexual abuse as a very young child, at the hands of two trusted family members. To make matters worse, no one advocated for her. They all acted as if she was lying. Her little heart was crushed, her trust ripped from her. She could never be vulnerable with a man again. She would love people, but she would never let them in. Men would only want to penetrate her, and women would only betray and abandon her. Sexual intimacy was very difficult early in our marriage. We would be in the middle of making love, and she would have a flashback to her abuse. She would be looking at me lovingly, and suddenly her whole countenance would change to one of horror, as her mind would be filled with the images of her past. I wanted to help her feel safe. I wanted to give her security. I made her promises that I would. Every time that would happen, my heart would rip. I could intellectually understand that it wasn't about me. Yet, at the same time, it was my eyes she was looking into with her own expression of pain and fear. I wanted to be sensitive to her and to care for her, but I couldn't help but feel terrible about myself. For years, I couldn't break that wall down. I finally had to give up trying to be her savior. I could not be the one she met in worship, which was the only time I ever saw her be completely, emotionally naked and vulnerable. I had no right to replace Jesus as the object of her devotion. When I stopped being jealous of God, and I gave up trying to replace Him in her heart, I was set free. Then, her worship of God set her free to be real and truly exposed with me.

It didn't happen overnight. It has been a long process, and it has been bumpy at times. In fact, now she enjoys our sexual intimacy much more than I do. It's not that she has gotten old and undesirable. She is still the same force of nature she always was. As a matter of fact, I think she has become more beautiful and incredibly intoxicating through our almost 18 years of marriage. Much to my chagrin, my medicine for my anger has given me some ... "issues". My doctor was considering putting me on Viagra or something else. Are you kidding me?!?! Until recently, I was a middle-aged 12 year old! In fact, I suspect they stole some of my blood to use as the formulaic model for drugs like Viagra! Yet, despite my "setback", we have learned how to grow in intimacy in our marriage, because we were both in our proper place. Neither of us was God for the other. Once I was able to embrace that I wasn't her Savior, it somehow made me safer for her. I was no longer delusional. I could just be Bill, and I could just love her.

Her Voice is still her place of intimacy and vulnerability, and I love that. She is wonderful, wise, brilliant, terrific, fabulous, sexy, brave, gorgeous, and intoxicating. She is even more of an indulgence and a guilty luxury than ever before. She is the embodiment of God's lavish love for me. I love her birthdays, because I just soak all day in the awe and wonder of just why God so delights in this Woman. She has been entrusted to me, and that is not something I take lightly. That is such an extreme honor. I could spend three lifetimes discovering more and more about Teresa, and I would not even scratch the surface of all of the wonderful depth of God's love reflected in her.

You know what? That night I played Bible Bingo and got Psalm 37:4, she was sitting in her host home a couple of miles away, praying about what to do about me. She played Bible Bingo also. She popped her Bible open, and what did she get from God? Psalm 37:4. Dude. Cue "Twilight Zone" theme song. God can even use bad hermeneutics to reach us.

I love you, Teresa. Happy Birthday. I hope that one day I can be at least somewhat worthy of the love, trust, and vulnerability that you have shown me. You are the greatest treasure God has ever given me. One last thing, my dear, precious love: I was reading this over, and I saw a lot of really nice things that I said about you. Wanna make-out later?

08/24/2011

I have been thinking a lot of our story. A post by Peter Eavis on the Not Religious Blog this morning was about this and got me obsessed. What drives us? What do we live for? Reading Leanne's post from Monday made me realize just how big of a story she has lived already! Being married, having twins, writing, and teaching full time, plus being Canadian, she already had my respect and admiration for her heroism. Finding out, now, just how much she has truly lived, has catapulted her into my "Legendary" category! She has been everywhere!

Look at the lives of most people. Because of choices made, many arbitrary at the time, they are doing something. They are filling some role. But are they fulfilled? Do they ever actually reach anything resembling the full potential of their calling and destiny? Statistics I've read (though I don't really know how they get these), say that more than 90% reach the end of their lives, without ever really reaching their potential or their destiny.

As I have worked on getting in touch with whom I was truly created to be, I have realized that I have settled for less. In my pursuit of health, I am more and more in touch with my potential. I am capable of much, much more than I have ever allowed myself to believe in the past. As we are running out of money, I am very tempted to go and do the dutiful, man-of-the-house thing of getting a practical 9-5 job, putting my writing on hold until "we are in a better place, financially". Does that sound familiar? Have you used that statement?

I have a resume that needs to be spiral bound. In order to continue to be a pastor, I have needed to work a number of different jobs to contribute to the family dinner table. "I've got to put food on the table!" is the mantra of almost every human being I know. It becomes a very convenient and non-threatening escape hatch. It protects us from intentionality in pursuing our dreams and potential. That way, we won't make blood, sweat, and tears sacrifices, possibly for years, only to realize at the end that our self-perception was a delusion of grandeur. I have found out who I really am, and I am unimpressed. That is our fear.

I can be truly great. I can do world-changing things for the Kingdom of God. I am afraid of taking the risk to try, only to find out I am wrong. I also don't enjoy living in the tension of being in over my head. Bumping into situations where I cannot confidently say, "I've got this." I want easy, effortless, and safe. I quote scriptures to myself like, "My yoke is easy, and my burden is light." See! Jesus doesn't want me to experience tension. Therefore, I won't, as an adult, go back to school to get my doctorate. I would have to face being wrong about some things. I would be challenged. I would be surrounded by people who are smarter than I am. I might find out I'm not as smart as I thought.

So, we play small. We stay in a conservative city with a very small-town mentality. A bigger city would eat us alive. Here, I can sell insurance during the day, drink beer in the evening, talk about the Packers, compare professional quarterbacks with how great I was back in the day, regale my friends with tales of my own exploits on the "ole gridiron" in high school (which remains, through my 40 years of life, the peak of my accomplishments), go home to watch some TV with the fam, and go up to the cabin on weekends. I wouldn't run into anyone smarter than I am on any day here. I never have to worry about being challenged and stretched. I subconsciously only choose people who are even less effective at achieving their potential to be my friends. The world I have created for myself has no tension. It is safe. It is simple. I've got this. It is a smaller story and rather uninspired, but it is my story.

Jesus came to give us life to the full. Why are we so scared to believe him? Why do we carry a gospel that is so small? John MacArthur, an influential pastor, recently blogged about, what he calls, the YRRs (the young, restless, and reformed). He says that there is never a reason for a pastor or minister to drink beer. If one does drink beer, one is obviously caving to the pressure of wanting to "be cool" and is compromising the gospel for the sake of catering to the secular culture at large. Now, I agree with MacArthur that if a pastor's motivation for drinking beer is to "be cool", "be hip", or to "fit in", then that's pretty lame. But, I love beer. Beer is yummy. I have a number of friends who are pastors and brew their own beer. I love trying different micro-brews. I started my church in a brewery, another thing that MacArthur finds to be insincere and sinful. Look, I am not really offended by, or defensive about, MacArthur's statements. Whatever. I started in a brewery, because a friend owns it and let us use it for free. I drink beer, because beer is a good, in and of itself. Also, I grew up Catholic, and we just didn't have the evangelical hang-ups. Again, none of that is the point.

When I hear a person make strong statements, with which I disagree, rather than just dismiss them out of hand, I like to see if I need to examine something in myself. So, rather than just dismissing MacArthur as a religious zealot and a legalistic idiot, I need to see what, in me, may need examining. My ultimate goal is obedience to Jesus. MacArthur's statement doesn't ring true to me, but there is a chance that this is so, because of my own rebellion, rather than an error on the part of MacArthur. So, I examine my own motives for starting a church in a brewery and for enjoying beer, which I stated above. Those don't seem sinful to me. OK, so maybe it's not the behavior, but what is behind it. At this point, I ask myself, "What is this person, with whom I disagree, trying to protect with these statements? What is the value behind the statement or behavior?"

In this case, MacArthur seems to be trying to protect the integrity of the gospel. Well, that's certainly a good thing, right? But then, we have to ask ourselves what is his interpretation of the gospel? Is what he is trying to protect something worth protecting? As I've often said, if something is truly true, it doesn't need defending or protection at all. It will stand on its own. Based on all that I have read by MacArthur, he seems to subscribe to a moralistic understanding of the gospel. This is the "larger story" for which he lives his life. This is called, in philosophical and theological terms, a metanarrative. A metanarrative is generally defined as the bigger-than-us story that gives us vision, purpose, and direction for our lives. It makes us. It defines us. It is our ultimate, transcendent, over-arching destiny that shapes our lives into the image of God for which we were created.

MacArthur's metanarrative seems to line up with evangelicalism as a whole. This is rhetoric we have heard from Tea Party Conservative politicians, from evangelists, from conservative neo-reformed pastors, and from Bible-and-gun-toting homeschoolers. This gospel can be summed up as this: "We were made good. Eve sinned and made Adam sin. So, we were now totally depraved and corrupt. God sent his son, Jesus, to die. He had nothing but hatred and wrath for us for our naughtyness. When we killed his son, that made him feel a lot better about us. We are still totally depraved. Women are the "totally depravest" (as much as you can have degrees of total depravity), because they started it. Now, however, God has nothing but wrath and hatred for us, until we say a special prayer. That prayer doesn't make God stop hating us. He is now willing to clean us up, not hate us quite as much, and let us go to heaven after we die. That special prayer is a pledge to be good. So, you are totally depraved, Jesus died, now, pray the prayer and stop sinning, so you can go to heaven after dying. That is what people in this school of thought seem to profess as their metanarrative.

This is not a metanarrative at all. It is an agenda. It is a creed or set of beliefs and principles. It may even be VERY strongly-held, but it is not metanarrative. How can that story shape me and define my life? "Behave"? Really? That's what Jesus gave His life for? Remember, a metanarrative has to be bigger than the person. It has to have the power to shape and drive the person. It is supposed to be a treasure in a field, that a person would sell absolutely everything in order to buy the field to get the treasure. Evangelicals have a small gospel. It is a small story. It has no value for shaping and defining our lives. It will get me nowhere near my destiny. A creature cannot be more powerful than the creator of that creature. It is always subject to the will of the creator, because it owes its very existence to the creator. In other words, this story of the gospel of sin management cannot be a metanarrative, because it is all created by people. A metanarrative has to come from beyond us, in order to be bigger than we are. Morality, politics, doctrine, rules, laws, principles, beliefs, and creeds are all human constructs.

A metanarrative also has to apply to all areas of life. When it doesn't, we suddenly have inconsistency and conflict. What if MacArthur met me in person, and he found out that I drink beer? Yet, I am completely devoted to following Jesus. I am not trying to be cool, I'm not young, restless, or reformed. I am a walking contradiction to the script that his story of morality and good behavior gives him. So, MacArthur now has to deal with his own inconsistencies and hypocrisy. He has surrounded himself with people who all agree with him and practice the same principles, values, and agenda. In other words, he has created a culture. Now, the expectation is that MacArthur will preach legalistic morality. He cannot do otherwise. He is stuck.

Let's imagine God visits him in a dream, showing him a large blanket coming down from heaven, filled with cans of Keystone Light. He hears the voice of God say, "Take and drink!" He can't do it. He has, in a very devoted and committed way, done exactly what his culture expected of him. So, in his zeal for protecting the integrity of his gospel, he has made himself larger than his own story. He is the creator of his own god, so that god cannot redirect him. Besides, he wouldn't accept the dream anyway, because he is conveniently a cessassionist. He doesn't believe that anyone can have a prophetic dream today. So, his small story has been built by him. "God hates beer. Stop drinking beer. Go to Heaven." That story, as a creation, cannot steer the creator. In this reality, MacArthur has effectively compromised the integrity of his gospel by caving to the whims of his own culture.

A metanarrative, while giving us a sense of values and convictions, has to also have the power to make us do otherwise. Without that power, it is simply an agenda or set of beliefs. Saul persecuted Christians, killing them out of a strong zeal for his faith. That's what drove him...until he was knocked off his ass by God. Then God changed his name to Paul, a man who no longer had an agenda and strong belief system. He now had a destiny, a purpose, and a larger story, not created by himself. It was given to him by God. Saul with an agenda became Paul with a metanarrative. Notice that it was God who gave that to him. He could not do it himself. Notice the name change. Our metanarrative is our identity. Our identity comes from God. When he became Paul, he no longer cared for his own life. He counted it all as loss for the sake of this larger story. Abram just wanted to get laid and have a kid. When he discovered the larger promises of God over his life, he became Abraham and began living a metanarrative. Jacob was a conniving little weasel, until he wrestled with God, received his unique blessing, and became Israel. Simon was a zealot who wanted to see the violent overthrow of the Romans, until suddenly he grasped the identity of this carpenter that he followed. Stripped of his agenda, he became Peter, the man with the metanarrative of being the rock-solid foundation of the global church.

This was not the story of sin management. It was the story of life to the full - of seeing the Glory of the Lord in the land of the living. It is the Gospel of the Kingdom come and coming. It is not dying and going to heaven. It is about Heaven coming down and transforming all reality. We have to prepare the way of the Lord. That is our destiny! Each of us were uniquely designed to take part in that. There is something that only you can do. No one else on the planet can accomplish it. It will require all of your resources, energy, skills, talents, and even your life. Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a grain of wheat. If it dies, it grows and bears a harvest 100 times its original potential. That means we have to die to our desire to remain safe. We have to die to our desire for comfort. We need a larger story that compels us to live in the tension. My yoke is easy and my burden is light becomes very real. Why? Because if it is a true metanarrative, we don't die grudgingly. The man who bought the field with the treasure did not grumble or complain about selling everything. It is all joy! It is a celebration! All of that stuff was in the way of him getting that treasure. He counted it all as loss for the sake of the treasure. Once we learn to embrace Jesus and die to the rest, we are transformed, not into people who behave themselves, but into people who are truly great. We live life to the full by living every moment in light of the Gospel of Jesus, by which we fulfill our destiny.

While writing this, I am listening to Ray Lamontagne and the Pariah Dogs. I love his music. He has a great song about wasting life by not risking and looking for a larger story. It's called "Old Before Your Time". I wanted to share the lyrics with you in closing:

Old Before Your Time lyrics by Ray Lamontagne And The Pariah Dogs

When I was a younger man lookin' for my pot of gold Everywhere I turned the doors were closin' It took every ounce of faith I had to keep on keepin' on And still I felt like I was only losin'

I refused then like I do now to let anybody tie me down And I lost a few good friends along the way I was raised up poor and I wanted more And maybe I'm a little too proud In lookin' back I see a kid who was just Afraid, hungry and old before his time

Through the years I've known my share of broken hearted fools And those who couldn't choose a path worth taking There's nothin' in the world so sad as talking to a man Who never knew his life was his for making

Ain't it about time you realize? It's not worth keepin' score You win some, you lose some and you let it go What's the use of stacking on every failure another stone Till you find you've spent your whole damn life Building walls, lonely and old before your time

It took so long to see That truth was all around me

Now the wren has gone to roost and the sky is turnin' gold And like the sky my soul is also turnin' Turnin' from the past, at last and all I've left behind Could it be that I am finally learnin'?

Learnin' I'm deserving of love and the peaceful heart I won't tear myself apart no more for tryin' I'm tired of lyin' to myself, tryin' to buy what can't be bought It's not livin' that you're doin' if it feels like dyin Cryin, growin' old before your time Cryin, growin' old before your time

08/22/2011

Quick note: I have made the "comment" button much bigger at the bottom. I'm assuming that people were having trouble finding it. It is at the end of the post. I have also removed the sign in requirement. Please comment and enjoy!!

I feel so blessed and so honored to introduce to you the art of Leanne Shirtliffe. I read this post a couple of days ago, and I was overcome by the honest searching for the presence of God. Leanne blogs at Ironic Mom. I am swapping blogs with her today. So, after you read this fantastic post from Leanne, head over there for my thoughts as well. But read Leanne's post first. You won't regret it! Here she is:

I grew up a good Lutheran girl in rural Manitoba. I went to church, I went to Sunday School, I went to Vacation Bible School. I played the organ.

I became a teenager. I taught Sunday School, I taught Vacation Bible School, I stopped playing the organ.

My faith was solid, my faith was safe.

Then I left that safety.

At 18, I went to college 1500 miles away, in a province I had never been to, in a city where I knew not a soul.

I found a Lutheran church. I dated a Lutheran and became engaged to him when he was in seminary. I played it safe.

All the while I knew I was not called to safety, but to edges.

Opportunities pushed me there.

I became a youth representative for the World Council of Churches’ committee on Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation. Every six months for five years I was flying somewhere by myself, learning geography as I flew over foreign lands, blindly trusting someone would pick me up or that I could follow the directions I was given and board the correct train, bus or taxi. I mapped the world and more. I met people, often students, performers, professors, advocates who were striving for justice in the context of a broken world. People who sang, who danced, who loved, who talked.

I remember Kenya the most.

Inspired by a child refugee I met outside All Saints Cathedral in Nairobi – whose entire family had been murdered in the genocide, I wrote this. Forgive me; I’m not a poet.

- Prodigal Self -

Rwandan girl

I don’t see you

in the sanctuary

performing your rehearsed steps.

You swim in a sea of refugees,

the Kenyan cathedral swallowing

you and your yellow robe.

Later, outside of worship, the drumbeats begin and

your bare feet kiss the searing cement

in an explosion of spontaneity.

In this dance for life,

you, young refugee, offer me refuge and

unleash fierce peace.

I kneel, eyes open:

is it in worship?

with the knowledge that I can touch the sun?

Rwandan girl

I still feel you

dancing in my sanctuary:

I was lost but now am found.

I was finding myself, or perhaps building myself as I traveled the world. I was collecting pieces of me. I was learning that if I let go of my safety, I became more.

I felt God. I met God. Several times. In the Rwandan girl. In a Filipino grandmother. In a Kenyan poet. In a Brazilian pastor.

After teaching for three years at a Lutheran school in Ontario, I ended my safe relationship with the seminarian. I attended an international schools’ recruitment fair. I told myself, I’ll teach anywhere except the Middle East.

I accepted a job teaching International Baccalaureate English to Grade 11 and 12 students. In the Middle East. In Bahrain, a Persian Gulf country so small it was but a dot on a world map near giant countries I knew from CNN: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran.

I sat on the edges of my safety as the KLM flight descended into Manama at 1 a.m. and was met by a kind Indian man, a driver, and a few new teachers who had been on the same flight.

I was dropped off at my furnished apartment and awoken by the call to prayer, this austere desert-like cry I would grow to love.

All of my students were Muslim, all had excellent English, all were planning to attend college in the UK or US. Nearly all did, on scholarships no less.

For my Grade 12 class, I inherited the syllabus, which included the poetry of William Blake. Ever conscious of cultural imperialism, I hid my faith and my knowledge of Christianity. Finally, one girl—the only one in class wearing a hijab—said, “Miss, we need to know about the Bible to understand Blake’s poems.”

She was right.

What followed was a back-and-forth discussion. I learned far more than my students. Mohammed had a prophet named Jesus? The story of the flood is in the Quran too? Abraham was also a prophet? We pieced together histories, we discussed Adam, we tackled Blake. We moved from innocence to experience, mirroring our study of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience. Later, in the Holy Month of Ramadan, we discussed the discipline of fasting. That classroom was my church. I found God in those students, and I found more pieces of me.

I spent three years there. Marriage followed. My husband (a partially-lapsed Catholic from Canada) and I were married in the same prairie church I had taught Sunday School in. A Lutheran pastor and Catholic priest oversaw the ceremony.

We moved to Thailand, one of the homes of Buddhism. We had jobs at an international school in the heart of Bangkok. The students I taught came from more than 40 countries. The school celebrated everything, from Christmas and Ramadan to Diwali and Loy Krathong.

Monks in saffron robes walked the morning streets. I listened to chanting in Buddhist temples. I attended Buddhist weddings. I began to recognize Thais—security guards, vendors, motorcycle taxi drivers—on my short walk to work.

One morning I had had enough of this chaotic city. The concrete, the noise, the heat, and the stench had me muttering to myself, cursing this apparent City of Angels. I rounded the first corner and saw a decomposing bat on one of the low-slung power lines.

For crying out loud.

Half a block later, I saw a partially eaten kitten on the road.

For the love of God.

I wiped sweat off my forehead and trudged around the next corner.

“Khun Leanne! Good morning!” said Khun Waemon, a middle aged Thai woman who was always gardening at 6:30. “For you!” she said. She handed me a single orchid. “It’s my last one. No more till after rainy season.”

I accepted the orchid and found God in Khun Waemon.

It’s been six years since I left the international life. I’m once again back in the safe zone. I attend a Lutheran church. I work at a steady job. I am married. I am raising two children. I live in the suburbs.

It doesn’t get much safer.

But I’ve also been pushed away from safety. Not in ways I’d recommend.

Over a year ago, the edges found me.

I became ill with pneumonia. And more. MRIs, CT scans, multiple EKGs, and blood work. Heart tests revealed an extra flap that required more tests.

In spite of this, I tried to do it all. To teach, to parent, to write, to pretend I was fine. But I was broken. My brokenness manifested itself in anxiety and extreme insomnia. For months.

I asked for help. God found me, again in people. In my cousin, who had been there. In my friend, who had been there. In my husband, who had been there. In my mother, who’d been there decades ago and who came to me.

I had two mantras, one that I’d ask my people to remind me: This too shall pass.

Another I reminded myself: In the palm of God’s hand.

God lives in people and words, I learned.

Now, I’m finding God in more people. Online, bizarrely. I like to joke that I started blogging because it was either that or move countries. But there’s truth in that. I needed to push myself into something new, something beyond my predictable, suburban world.

I don’t think I live on the edge very much on my blog, but people like Bill and Clay and Chase and Larry and Kelly and Jessica and Renee and Liz and Tamara and Reba (and all the others I’m unfairly leaving out, including my wordbitches Elena and Trish) have held me as I walk around a bit more on the edge.

This post has taken me there, too. Almost literally. But it feels good. It feels good to stand on the edge and take the time to look around.

08/17/2011

I have a very super-duper and excitingly wonderful announcement to make tomorrow, so make sure you check back! Today, I want to take an excellent comment from Julie Duffy, one of the greatest people alive today, and take off from it a bit. She raises some awesome thoughts for discussion, so definitely read on! Also, I promise to never use "super-duper" again. Ever.

On my post from Monday on Pastoral Leadership and the Need(?) for Compromise, I griped a little bit about how hard being a pastor is. Many people played violins for me and felt appropriately sorry for me. Others wrote to me to check if I was OK or going off the deep end. My friend, Julie Duffy, one of the people who helped me get back to Jesus in my tumultuous teenage years, came in with a comment that dug right past my defensive whining and got to the core of what I have been trying to express. She was always awesome at that. As I work to cut through the crap of Christianity to get to Jesus, it is overly optimistic to think that I don't add crap of my own to the steaming, stinking pile. If I have but faith the size of a mustard seed, I can move that mountain of crap, maybe even my own contributions to it. Here is what Julie said:

For all of my pissing and moaning about being a pastor and the hardships of ministry, this is what I was trying to get to. To all my friends out there, I am fine. I'm not going anywhere, unless I have no choice financially. I am a minister for life. I am ruined by God for anything else. So, looking at Julie's comment as a backdrop, let me get to what I really wanted to say on Monday.

Life sucks. It's painful, awful, sweaty, bloody, greedy, violent, perverse, wasteful, boring, trite, and uninspired. It begins and ends with us soiling ourselves. What is our purpose? When we, as a species, are painfully aware of our own mortality, knowledgeable about the solution to all of our problems, and too lazy and self-interested to act on that solution, what hope do we have? We are living in the Emperor's New Clothes, maybe the most prophetic fable ever told. Instead of clothes, our version is about feces. A giant, global mountain of feces. Our enemy, who has no interest in our survival or our progression toward health and wholeness, has convinced us that this mountain is not feces at all. It is a pile of chocolate! This is paradise! We can live in the chocolate, play in the chocolate, eat the chocolate, and cover ourselves in the chocolate. Yummy!! Every now and then, one of us wrinkles our nose a bit. Something isn't right. This sure doesn't smell like chocolate... Quickly the others move to convince us that our delusion is reality. After all, we have been told that whomever doesn't appreciate the chocolate is an uncultured fool! This doesn't taste or smell like the chocolate you're used to, because this is exotic chocolate, usually eaten by the rich, by celebrities, by sports heroes, by famous world leaders, and by royalty. Do you want people to think you are human trash from the lowest class? Shut up, and enjoy the chocolate! Don't you want to have a life like the glamorous and rich people, like Amy Winehouse, Charlie Sheen, Princess Diana, Michael Jackson, Ted Haggard, and even President Obama? So, the one who questions is beaten back into blind submission to the chocolate mountain.

Jesus calls us to have faith like a child. In the Emperor's New Clothes, it is a child who pulls back the curtain on the delusional group-think. In the Wizard of Oz, it is a child who exposes the Wizard as the snake oil salesman. We need to be like children. Now, in the tale of the emperor, we don't see what happens to the child after his bold act of pure honesty. Was he rewarded? Was he punished? Was he mocked for being a fool? Was he told that children should be seen and not heard? I don't know. What I do know is that this task is exactly the mission for which God has been preparing me, even before my birth. I am not "above it all" or "wiser than the rest of humanity". I just have nothing to lose. I am a fool. God's fool. I cannot just shut up and enjoy the chocolate anymore. It's foul. I will be even more undignified than this for more of a taste of the glory of God. So, I climb down from the mountain, clean myself up as best as I can, and become the herald of the Gospel. It's funny how a big part of the Gospel seems like bad news at first, but it is all about shattering the delusion. It's all Good News with Jesus! So, I fill my lungs with air. I take on the mantle of being God's fool and God's herald. At the top of my lungs, while worship leaders blow trumpets around me, from another mountain peak, Mount Zion, through a megaphone, I scream:

First, and this is important, what you are eating is not chocolate at all! It's not exotic sweets from some far off land! It is a big, steaming, disgusting pile of SHIT!!! That's right!! You have been lied to for all of these years! It is all SHIT!! Wait, don't run over here to crucify me just yet!! Wait until you hear the second part, because once you are done throwing up, this will be important!

Second, what you really need is Living Water to clean out all of that human waste, and you need a Kingdom Feast to give you strength and purpose for your life! The really Good News is that those are both available to you RIGHT NOW!! No, I don't have it over here. You already have it!! You are just so full of shit, that you were unaware. All you have to do is stop eating poop, so you have the ability to take and eat and drink what you really hunger for! No, there are no pre-requisites or requirements to stay at that feast! No, you don't have to get cleaned up first. Just stop eating crap, and turn to what every human being in all of history and living today needs to begin living a real eternity in Paradise today; right now! You all need Jesus! Then, with the faith of a mustard seed, we can clear out this crap mountain and never be deceived by it again!!

Life rules. It is beautiful, magnificent, glorious, heroic, powerful, fun, exciting, terrific, heart-breakingly wonderful, loving, and full to overflowing with the grace, peace, mercy, love, and Presence of the vitally imminent Heart of the Living God. How can we settle for shit, when this is our Reality? It is the Really Real. God describes God's Self as "I AM WHO AM". God IS Reality. God is Existence and Being. God IS "IS-NESS".

When that is our Reality, as Julie so eloquently pointed out, how can we be satisfied with polished, practiced, safe, sterile, and mundane church? We are celebrating in the Presence of Existence! We say we want to abide in God, but it is a God of our own making. God in our own likeness and image. It is a safe, controllable god, who seeks for Me to behave properly, dress properly, be silent, keep My kids in line or get them out of the room, smile, and give an appropriate amount of money. My god asks for 10% of My money, but My god understands that I am saving for a family vacation. God loves the American Family as an institution, so My god wants that to take priority. In fact, My god blesses all that I like, and My god hates all the people I hate. My god wants to use pastors to communicate nice, neat, 3 or 5 part lessons to Me, laced with humor, film clips, and pithy, memorable sound bytes. My god doesn't care about community, the poor, the marginalized, the seeking, the desperate, or the broken. My god cares only about the preservation of My white, suburban lifestyle. So, I will abide in My god's presence by behaving Myself, managing My sin, hiding the sin I can't manage, calling others out on their sin based on My morality, voting for My candidates (who share My views on abortion and gay marriage), and listen to the voice of My god, as long as that god keeps the message short and sweet. My god only communicates light and fun stuff, like "5 Steps to a Better Marriage", "3 Steps to Financial Success", and "Funny Things Kids Say About God (to the over-payed, ungrateful teachers in school and children's church who raise My kids for Me, because I am too self-involved, narcissistic, and stupid to realize how precious both My children and those teachers are)".

How did church become this? No, I'm not doubting being a pastor. I am looking for a way to get to the Real God, who can't be owned or controlled by anyone or even all of us together. The real God who came to earth in Jesus to be in our existence. Jesus didn't preach nice, family-friendly stuff. Jesus got his hands dirty. He entered our mountain-of-crap existence to pull every lost lamb off of it. He made a way by destroying the veil of delusion, like Dorothy pulling back the curtain, to expose that the Temple and all the rest is a lie. When the Temple Veil tore in two, God wasn't there. God was covered in our crap and taking it to Hell with Jesus to dispose of it there. We don't have to live this way anymore. It is finished.

I want a faith experience where we have the Really Real. I want all of the crazy, glorious, overwhelming, scary, powerful, and earth-shattering Glory of the Living God to burst into our presence during every gathering. I want God to show us that God is More. God is Transcendent. God is Imminent. God IS. I want us to be afraid to look at God, and yet compelled to look at God. Anne Rand spoke of church as being children playing with a chemistry set and mixing dynamite. We wear bonnets, dresses, suit coats, and bow ties. Instead, we should be issuing life vests, safety gear, and crash helmets! We should have five-point harnesses on all of the seats! We are about to become aware of the Presence of the Living God! How dare we be so casual, self-focused, and flippant.

I want a crash helmet church. I don't have it in me to preach happy, witty, and light 5 or 3 point lessons. I am tasked with being a herald for the Eternal, Universe-Transforming Kingdom of God. I can only preach that, and it's all Good News! I want to live in the untamed Presence of God and lead others there. I never want to say another word about sin to anyone, but focus on my own need for forgiveness and reorientation to Jesus as my center. I need to keep pointing people toward Jesus, and issuing life vests, safety gear, and crash helmets. I want the Presence of God to rock people to their core, leaving them completely undone. After all, I have nothing to lose. I am God's fool. I want to have a community where people live, breathe, eat, play, work, discuss, fight, drink, cry, sing, laugh, marry, pray, have sex, worship, learn, raise kids, hurt, heal, dream, exist, and grow only Jesus. Jesus IS. How do we get there?

The first part of the Good News, though painful, is what our expression of church currently is: Shit.

The second part of the Good News is what our expression of church can potentially be: Jesus.

I so long for More Jesus. I am desperate for Him. I want all I am and all I do to be Him. I can no longer bide stupid, meaningless, irrelevant church. I want to be able to say whatever God puts on my heart, without fear of social, political, or financial repercussions. I want Jesus. I will not settle for less. However, I can't do that alone. For some reason, God set it up that individual faith, contrary to our popular opinion, is not sustainable. We need community. So, how do we get there? How can church reflect the Really Real? How do we all wake up, smell the poop, and turn to embrace the Glory of Jesus?